


Memento

by Teethteethteethteethteethteethteeth



Series: Going Down With a Fight (Series) [3]
Category: Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys - My Chemical Romance (Album), The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys (Comic)
Genre: Angst, Death, Gen, Heavy gore and medical stuff in this one, Hurt No Comfort, Nighmares, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, Whump
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-18
Updated: 2020-06-18
Packaged: 2021-03-04 02:40:57
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24796336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Teethteethteethteethteethteethteeth/pseuds/Teethteethteethteethteethteethteeth
Summary: Why Fun Ghoul doesn’t like hospitals.
Series: Going Down With a Fight (Series) [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1793005
Comments: 6
Kudos: 12





	Memento

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! Please mind the warnings on this one! Some bad, gory stuff happens to Fun Ghoul, and I want to make that very clear from the get-go. So warnings for bad stuff happening to a kid, and intense medical stuff.

The crumbling building, dirt and dust obscuring the faded blue paint, looks nothing like a hospital, nothing like the massive white building of glass and steel near the center of Battery City. But Fun Ghoul’s panicking anyways, even hours after Show Pony picks them up and takes them home, the rest of their crew still inside. They shove their racing thoughts away in favor of paying attention to the Girl for the rest of the evening, and they don’t quite believe in it, but they slip a red woven bracelet onto their wrist next to their inverted cross, Zone superstition to keep the nightmares at bay. It doesn’t work.

And Fun Ghoul is ten again, caught in the crossfires of a Juvee Hall rebellion quashed by a squad of exterminators and Draculoids. They drop their schoolbag and run, trying to get distance between themself and the carnage, but a Drac’s shot goes wide, startling them and they stumble, slamming forwards into the concrete. They hunch over their scraped knees, frozen, when someone grabs them by the shoulder, dragging them backwards. Scrambling to see who’s captured them, they gape, face-to-face with a Juvee Hall, who grins back at their shocked expression as they dodge rubble in the streets, hauling the kid who will be Fun Ghoul into a burnt-out housing unit.   
“You’re safe here, it’s okay.” They only blink, shocked quiet, as the Juvee talks, simultaneously assessing them for injuries.   
“My name’s Baron Von Bullshit, pleased to meet you!” They snort, shocked by the curse word as much as they are the unconventional name.   
“You got a name? Pronouns? I use she/her, by the way.” Hesitating, they shake their head.   
“Okay. You hanging in there? I—“ an explosion wracks the building and they both jump, as dust and chunks of roof rain down around the two.   
“Oh, shit. Okay, we gotta get outta here, ready to run for it?” Baron Von Bullshit grabs their wrist, prepared to drag them through the chaos again, but before they can, the building crumbles, cheap construction giving way. Baron Von Bullshit throws herself over them as a chunk of steel the size of a washing machine crushes her. They’re alive, but crushed beneath Baron Von Bullshit and the debris currently killing her. Blood running from her nose and mouth drip onto their face, and each breath hurts like nothing else they’ve experienced. Baron Von Bullshit is still alive, barely, and she reaches up to break the charm off her necklace, pressing it into their hand.   
“I’m... sorry.”

A pair of Dracs find the two of them hours later, and the child who will be Fun Ghoul wakes up in the hospital with a surgeon’s scalpel in their chest. Anesthesia awareness, the doctors explain to them later, and there must be something wrong with their body that makes them resistant to it and to the BLI pills. (They consider it a messed-up kind of blessing as they get older, that they’re able to push through BLI’s medicines). But now, it’s only terrifying, as they watch and feel white-masked surgeons reconstruct their mangled insides. It’s terrifying when the doctors insert a tube through their throat to make them breathe, the motions unnatural and painful. Months later, they leave the hospital, celebrated in the news as the child attacked and wounded during the Juvee Hall riots, saved by heroic BLI employees, now fully recovered. But though their body is healed, they still wake up in the night choking on the very air they breathe, flinching at the sight of white-clothed doctors and the blank, rubbery masks of Draculoids.

Their personal affects were returned to them when they left the hospital; a bloodstained school uniform, their bag, recovered from the street by some dutiful Drac, and Baron Von Bullshit’s necklace charm. It’s an ornate inverted cross, and whoever organized their belongings must have taken it for a religious item, and therefore not confiscated it. So they keep it, loop it on a length of twine around their neck, hidden beneath their shirt. And once they escape the city, they move it to their wrist, display it with pride. They try not to look at it too often, though, lest they remember how they came to own it.

**Author's Note:**

> I’m not sure how happy I am with this one, I feel like the concept was good, and laying it down turned out weird. Baron Von Bullshit’s name is from the band Modest Mouse, if you were wondering, and I’m on tumblr @wishiwasthemoon-tonight.


End file.
